Partisan Christie wrong as governor

On May 18, at the height of the Republican primary campaign for the New Jersey gubernatorial nomination, Chris Christie was interviewed on Fox News Channel by Sean Hannity.

Appearing with Hannity, or for that matter with any of the Fox
demagogues, would have been bad enough, but some of Christie’s answers
were shocking.

For example, when asked what he thought of some current Republican
governors — notably Sarah (“I can see Russia from here!”) Palin of
Alaska and Mark (“Hiking the Appalachian Trail”) Sanford of South
Carolina — refusing to accept some of the federal stimulus funds for
their states, Christie gave a disturbing answer:

“I think it makes sense,” he said.

Of course it makes sense to him. It’s Barack Obama’s stimulus, and
Christie wants nothing to do with it. That’s a partisan position, and
Christie is a consummate partisan who boasts of the role he played in
George W. Bush’s 2000 presidential campaign — a role for which he was
rewarded with an appointment as U.S. Attorney for New Jersey.

Christie had no fear of being fired in Karl Rove’s botched purge of
insufficiently partisan U.S. attorneys, because he was clearly a
political operative.

Perhaps his most outrageous single use of his office for political
purposes was his much- ballyhooed investigation of our junior U.S.
senator, Democrat Robert Menendez, during the 2006 Senate campaign
season. Characteristically, Christie was acting on spurious ethics
claims about Menendez’s efforts to aid a non-profit agency (because
Menendez had rented the agency some space he owned) eight years
earlier. Of course, no charges were ever filed.
Rove must have been so impressed with Christie’s loyalty to the Bush
agenda that he had allegedly improper conversations with Christie about
his political future while the latter was still a U.S. attorney.

Fortunately, Rove’s grand scheme for a permanent Republican majority
failed because Bush’s policies failed. And Christie will fail because
Bush’s views are his views.

It’s hard to imagine a worse candidate for governor of New Jersey — or
one whose views are more at odds with those of a majority of New Jersey
voters — than Chris Christie.